Architecture and Public Policy

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CIS explores how changes in the architecture of computer networks affect the economic environment for innovation and competition on the Internet, and how the law should react to those changes. This work has lead us to analyze the issue of network neutrality, perhaps the Internet's most debated policy issue, which concerns Internet user's ability to access the content and software of their choice without interference from network providers.

Richard Salgado serves as Google's Director for information security and law enforcement matters. Prior to joining Google, Richard was with Yahoo!, focusing on international security and compliance work. He also served as senior counsel in the Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section of the United States Department of Justice. As a federal prosecutor, Richard specialized in investigating and prosecuting computer network cases, such as computer hacking, illegal computer wiretaps, denial of service attacks, malicious code, and other technology-driven privacy crimes.

Brendan Sasso is the Open Internet Fellow at Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society. In his previous career as a journalist, he covered the Federal Communications Commission as it wrote landmark net neutrality regulations in 2015. He also wrote about issues including consumer privacy, government surveillance, cybersecurity, and intellectual property. He worked for The Hill and National Journal, and his work has also appeared in The Atlantic, Quartz, and DefenseOne. He has appeared on C-SPAN, MSNBC, Fox News, and NPR to discuss current technology policy issues.

Ben Scott is a Visiting Fellow at the Stiftung Neue Verantwortung in Berlin and Senior Adviser to the Open Technology Institute at the New America Foundation in Washington DC. Previously, he was Policy Advisor for Innovation at the US Department of State, where he worked at the intersection of technology and foreign policy. In a small team of advisors to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, he helped to steward the 21st Century Statecraft agenda with a focus on technology policy, social media and development.

David Segal is the executive director and co-founder of the activism organization Demand Progress, and in that capacity also runs the anti-plutocracy group Rootstrikers. He previously served as a member of the Providence City Council and as a Rhode Island state representative. He ran for Congress in 2010, backed by much of the "netroots", organized labor, and the Rhode Island progressive movement.

The presidential campaign of 2016 thankfully – and we can only hope officially – ended this evening. As of when this article was posted, there are no reports of widespread cyberattacks or other digital interference against state voting systems. Of course, since votes are still being tallied, we’re not in the clear yet. But current indications are that this was a fairly uneventful election, from a cybersecurity perspective at least.

The Center for Internet and Society just wrapped up its Law, Borders, and Speech Conference. We had an amazing line-up of speakers and a great set of topics -- the event was a blast, and we are getting enthusiastic feedback from newly minted Internet jurisdiction nerds and old hands alike.

The extended DDoS attacks over the past few days that triggered widespread outages and Internet congestion are more than a mere annoyance. Rather, these instances have proven to be increasingly sophisticated efforts to strike at core networking protocols—the infrastructure that makes the Internet operate—to render large portions of the network inoperable or inaccessible. Perhaps the greatest irony of these complex attacks has been the fact that they have been conducted on the backs of some of the dumbest devices out there—the so-called "smart" devices that make up the Internet of Things (IoT).

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In November 2015, T-Mobile, the third largest provider of mobile Internet access in the U.S., launched a new service called Binge On that offers “unlimited” video streaming from selected providers. Customers on qualifying plans can stream video from forty-two providers in Binge On – Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, HBO, and others – without using their data plans, a practice known as zero-rating. As currently offered, Binge On violates key net neutrality principles and harms user choice, innovation, competition, and free speech online. As a result, the program is likely to violate the FCC’s general conduct rule.

We are inventors, entrepreneurs, engineers, investors, researchers, and business leaders working in the technology sector. We are proud that American innovation is the envy of the world, a source of widely-shared prosperity, and a hallmark of our global leadership.

The post below is an open letter to European citizens, lawmakers and regulators, from our founder and Web inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Professor Barbara van Schewick, and Professor Larry Lessig. Join the conversation in the comments below or on Twitter using #savetheinternet or #netneutrality.

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Comcast Corp. v. FCC is a 2010 United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia case holding that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) does not have ancillary jurisdiction over Comcast’s Internet service under the language of the Communications Act of 1934. In so holding, the Court vacated a 2008 order issued by the FCC that asserted jurisdiction over Comcast’s network management polices and censured Comcast from interfering with its subscribers' use of peer-to-peer software.

In 2005, on the same day the FCC re-classified DSL service and effectively reduced the regulatory obligations of DSL providers, the FCC announced its unanimous view that consumers are entitled to certain rights and expectations with respect to their broadband service, including the right to:

"Barbara van Schewick, Director of Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society and a leading expert on net neutrality, argues that Stream TV contravenes the FCC’s open internet policy because Comcast is engaging in economic discrimination, through zero-rating, and technical discrimination, by giving its own video service preferential treatment.

""It's just another form of favoring one application over another," said Barbara van Schewick, a Stanford law professor. In January, she published a report accusing T-Mobile's Binge On service of violating Net neutrality."

From the First Amendment to Net Neutrality. How Media Regulation Affects What We Say

Does the FCC's recent ruling on net neutrality promise more equal media access? Or will it lead to years of divisive litigation? FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn will discuss implications of the new rules and the role of media regulation in creating a free press; Victor Pickard of the University of Pennsylvania will look at how media regulation choices in the 1940s affect us today; Stanford's Morgan Weiland will explain what the proposed federal shield law means for journalists.

A Brave New Era? Or, Back to the Future? Are we in 1934? 1993? Or, 2015? The FCC’s order on the open internet – What did the FCC really do and what will it mean for internet service providers, online music and video companies, e-commerce companies, transit providers and consumers?

On 24th February, the 2015 Digital Leaders Annual Lecture, ‘Digital Democracy,’ will take place at the Houses of Parliament.

The lecture will be hosted by Chloe Smith MP; the lecturer is Dr. Ben Scott, Senior Advisor to the Open Technology Institute at the New America Foundation in Washington DC and a Visiting Fellow at the Stiftung Neue Verantwortung in Berlin.

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""If I'm a church or a university, I can put my content online, when it travels to my users it will get the same treatment that, you know, CNN's content will get or the content of The New York Times," says Barbara van Schewick, the director of the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School."

"Netflix accounts for about a third of peak-period broadband traffic. So what does that mean for the net neutrality debate? "I don't think it matters," says Barbara van Schewick, faculty director of the Center for Internet and Society at the Stanford Law School, "because under a good network neutrality regime, people pay for the bandwidth they use and it doesn't really matter where it comes from.""